Cambrian Cnidarian Jellyfish Fossil

Name: Phylum Cnidaria (a jellyfish)

Age: Cambrian

Size: mm (25.4mm=1 inch): Matrix measures 115 by 97

Location: Krukowski Quarry, Mount Simon Sandstone Outlier, Mosinee,Wisconsin

Phylum Cnidaria (anemones, corals, jellyfish and sea pens) are among the most ancient animals , simplest in body form, and yet are ubiquitous and widespread even today in marine environments. The earliest forms in the fossil record appear in Ediacarian fauna of Southern Australia, which dates to the Precambrian some 600 million years ago. This is clear testiment that old and simple animals can be enormously successful.

Here we have a Cambrian Cnidarian from an intriguing site in Central Wisconsin. Being comprised entirely of soft tissue unlike animals with exoskeletons (e.g., trilobites) or skeletons (vertebrates), jellyfish fossils are body fossils that are impressions of the jellyfish. Such fossil impressions are rare, especially from the Cambrian. Note that these jellyfish have but have tentacles in the familiar radial symmetry of all Cnidarians. Jellyfish were some of the most ferocious preditors of the Cambrian marine environment.

These jellyfish come from a particular horizon in the Mount Simon Sandstone formation that also yields facinating Diplichnites and Protichnites, huge Jellyfish (Medusae) and Climactichnites.

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